When a user visits a page on your website and leaves without visiting any other page, that is a bounce. The bounce rate is the percentage number of all people who bounce out of your website. There are several ways that users can leave their website. These include:

• Hitting the back button
• Closing the browser
• Closing the tab/window
• Clicking on a link to another website
• Typing a new URL

These are things we do every day and this is normal. Right? Well yeah, but there is a huge difference between good bounce rate and bad bounce rate. To understand this you need to know that:

• 80% bounce rate and above- very bad
• 70-80% bounce rate- poor
• 50-70% bounce rate- average
• 30-50% bounce rate – excellent
• 20% bounce rate and below- there is a tracking error

Although the bounce rate varies from one industry to another, a high bounce rate is a symptom of disease on your website. It is an indication that something about your strategy is not right. And this also means that your conversion rate is low. According to best SEO Brisbane, a high bounce rate is not good for your business and you need to do something to reduce it.

Below are proven ways you can use to reduce your bounce rate.

Check Your Content’s Readability

Content readability is one of the reasons that users run away from your site. Go through your content to confirm that it’s both legible and readable. Large chunks in particular will scare away your readers. Avoid them.

Also, remember to check your content formatting. Poor formatting is also another reason why users will leave your website without a second thought. There are so many websites with great content but because of their poor formatting, they experience a high bounce rate. To ensure that your content is well-formatted and readable,

• Use subheadings
• Use bullet points
• Use charts, screenshots, and images
• Use bold keywords but do not overdo it
• Use questions to engage your readers. This allows your readers to participate and be part of the conversation
• Always end with a conclusion and make it actionable.

Avoid Pop-ups

How do you feel when you are reading something and you are interrupted by a pop-up ad? Well, it’s not just you. 70% of readers say that irrelevant pop-ups annoy them. And this is not about to change anytime soon. Many people have and will always hate pop-up ads. And the more pop-ups you have on your site, the more users will navigate from your site.

While this is true, there is another way you can look at pop-ups. The fact is that they have the potential to grow your email list pretty fast. So, if that is the only thing you need then use them. But if you want your site to remain useful for long while generating traffic, then you should minimize the use of pop-ups or avoid them altogether. If you must use them, please ensure that they are not annoying to the reader. A well-designed pop-up can actually increase your conversion rate. The idea is to create a good user experience.

Check your Site’s Speed

Site speed is another thing that can increase your bounce rate. For most users, the first few seconds are enough for them to make up their mind about a website. Even the statistics show that 47% of users expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.

In another research, it was revealed that a one-second delay can cost you 7% of your sales, 11% page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. So, you can see how important your site speed is.

There are several ways you can use to improve the speed on your website. To begin with, go through all your images and optimize them. Also, use a secondary platform such as YouTube to host your videos instead of loading them on your website. Videos and pictures are the two most common things that can slow down your site’s loading speed.

Also, consider performing a speed test on your website. Test how your site loads on both desktops and mobile devices. Like we said above, users expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. This is especially true for smartphone users. By improving speed you will create a good user experience on your website.

Other ways you can use to speed up your website include:

• Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network)- this one of the easiest and quickest ways
• Adding a better caching
• Changing your hosting provider to a faster one

Check Your CTA (Call-to-Action)

After you have written very good content and a perfect headline, you cannot afford to lose your visitors with a poor CTA. The CTA is the point where you convince your users to buy whatever it is you are selling. This is the point where you convert them to your customers. As such, you must have a compelling CTA.

If you are having a high bounce rate, it is possible that your CTA is not working well and you need to check it out and optimize it. One thing that many people do not know is that everything matters when it comes to optimizing your CTA. Even something as small as adjusting the text on a button really matters.

Another way you can optimize your CTA is by giving free trials. You can use a 7 days free trial, 14 days free trial, or even a 30 days free trial depending on the industry you are in. If you are in the SaaS business, free trials are the surest way to convert users to customers.

Use Re-targeting

How many times have you seen a customer add an item to their cart but then they leave never to come back? I am sure, many times. In fact, statistics show that the average cart abandonment rate is 76%. As you can see, this happens all the time.

But there is one very wrong assumption that many people make. They assume that if a cart was abandoned, it’s because the user was no longer interested. Yes, this is true for some cases but not all of them. You will be surprised by the number of people who abandoned their cart simply because they had to attend to a client who just came in and they do not remember what page they were on. Others just lost power or internet connection and when they came back, they were busy with something else.

It is for these and many more reasons that you need to use re-targeting. When a customer is leaving a page, you can add a pop-up to request their email addresses to contact them in the future. Emailing is the most effective way to re-target your users and rekindle their interest. You will be surprised at the number of people who would come back just because you reached out to them.

Conclusion

Now you know what bounce rate is and the several ways you can use to reduce it. Depending on the industry you are in, some ways might work for you others might not. Bottom line is, choose the combination that works best for you. Additionally, you can use the help of SEO agency to get a guaranteed reduction in your bounce rate.